It's Official

The Smiths are on the move. After much prayful consideration, we have decided to relocate to Greenville, SC.

There are lots of reasons, but since it's been almost a year since I've posted to my blog, I'll do some catching up first.

In Jan 2009, Tony was one of 109 laid off from Mountain States Health Alliance. That was the factor that started us thinking. He made the decision to go for early retirement. Then his doctor told him to quit driving. He's now in the middle of the process to get SS Disability. That all started the ball rolling.

We love Jonesborough, but it's not a place condusive to mobility problems. There is no way for a person who shouldn't drive to get out. We knew we should leave, but where.

Greenville was the logical choice. We probably would never have left there in 1997 had it not been for a job change. We love the area, the town, the cultural aspects, the weather and the people. They have a good transit system, so Tony will be able to get out and about. Employment opportunities for me is much greater. It's close to my hometown and friends around there.

So we drove down (2.5 hours from J'boro) and made sure we still loved it. It's always the place we would go for a long weekend or just to run down on a Sat. And yes, we still love it.

So the ball picked up speed. I let my work know what's happening and they are very graciously letting me work until we leave. Our friends all know around here. We're having a downsizing/yard sale on the 25th. We'll be going back to apartment living which I so look forward to. I've decided that having a lawn is just not something I want anymore.

We've found a great place not far from downtown. It's an old textile mill converted into modern loft apartments. Each floorplan is named for a well known Greenvillian or other famous person. Being a huge baseball fan, I think it's neat that the plan we chose is the Shoeless Joe Jackson, who was from Greenville.

Our anticipated date for moving is by Sept. 30. We won't be here for the storytelling festival this year, but I'm sure we'll be back in future years. We already have plans to be back for Thanksgiving.

We rented a storage unit there on Monday and left a van full of boxes. The plan is to head down at least once a week with a load. That way when it comes time for a truck, it will be a small one with just the remaining furniture. Then we can move out of the storage unit at a slower pace.

That's the Smith news for now. If you know of any job opportunites there, pass them on. If you are in the area next Sat. stop by the sale. I'll try to take pictures and post them and more here as things progress. I've missed blogging.

So if you are in the Greenville area after Oct. 1, let us know. We'd love to show you around.

ABC's of Homemaking

I've seen this on several blogs I read and thought I'd join in.

Please feel free to copy and play along on your blog. Just take out my answers and put in your own.


A ~Aprons--y/n If y, what does your favorite look like? Yes and my favorite is my brown one with some candies screen printed that says "Nobody knows the truffles I've seen."

B ~ Baking--Favorite thing to bake? Bread and cookies. I've found a good simple oatmeal cookie recipe that the folks at Tony's work love. Now every Wed. I have cookies to send in for his team meeting. Also, I'm making Grandmother's Bread. (Thanks Suzanne)

C ~ Clothes line? No, I'm a dryer person.

D ~ Donuts--Have you ever made them? No, never made them. I get my donut fix at the Shell station which sells Krispy Kreme.

E ~ Everyday--One homemaking thing you do everyday? Clean the kitchen. I'm a messy cook.

F ~ Freezer--Do you have a separate deep freeze? Yes, it's not huge, but the right size for the two of us. I fill it with soups and stews and chili, mainly.

G ~ Garbage Disposer? Yes, and I use it, but I also am trying to start a compost pile out back.

H ~ Handbook--What is your favorite homemaking resource? The Joy of Cooking. It's the one I go to for basics and other helps.

I ~ Ironing--Love it or Hate it? Or hate it but love the results? HATE to iron. I'd rather clean 10 gas station restrooms. I'm not crazy over the results either. I'm not good. Tony is much better and would rather iron his stuff himself. Works for me!!

J ~ Junk Drawer--y/n? Where is it? Yes. Kitchen, study, living room, uh, too many

K ~ Kitchen--color and decorating scheme. White

L ~ Love--what is your favorite part of homemaking? Having a baking day or a soup making day. I like seeing and enjoying the finished product, but I also like the processes.

M ~ Mop--y/n? Yes, after trying the swiffer thing, I'm back to a regular mop and bucket. Works much better. I hate the smell of the swiffer cleaner. The kitchen always smelled like old, dead cigarettes to me after I used it. Yuck

N ~ Nylons, machine or hand wash? Machine wash when there are any to wash.

O ~ Oven--do you use the window or open the oven to check? Both. It depends on what I'm cooking. I don't like to lose the heat by opening the door, but sometime you gotta.

P ~ Pizza--What do you put on yours? First, it's my homemade so I control the quantity of ingredients. Lots of pepperonis, mozz cheese, fresh mushrooms. I'm a traditionalist.

Q ~ Quiet--What do you do during the day when you get a quiet moment? Knit

R ~ Recipe Card Box--y/n? What does it look like? No box. I have a notebook of favorites, plus a bookcase of books

S ~ Style of house--What style is your house? 1950's ranch

T ~Tablecloths or Place mats? Both. It's usually placemats for daily and tablecloths for company or when the table isn't in use.

U ~ Under the kitchen sink--organized or toxic wasteland? Organized and not too toxic

V ~ Vacuum--How many times per week? Minimum of once a week. I've been doing more lately because of all the little bits of dried leaves coming in.

W ~ Wash--How many loads of laundry do you do per week? Gee, I've never counted. I wash when I need to.

X's--Do you keep a daily list of things to do that you cross off? I try to, but I'm not always successful

Y ~ Yard--y/n? Who does what? Yes, with lots of trees. I do the yard work and the gardening. I love to mow!

ZZZ's ~ what is your last homemaking task for the day before going to bed? Make the coffee so it will be waiting on me the next morning

Festival

The 37th National Storytelling Festival has ended. Tents are coming down. Chairs are being stacked. Port-a-potties are heading back to wherever they come from. Restaurants are going over what inventory is left. The golfers at the Ridges have their carts back. ISC is $1 million closer to the $3M goal for the Horizon project. Actually there's a little over $250K to be raised.

And yet stories are still bouncing around the town.

The weekend started with a trip to the airport to pick up Karen Chace, Teresa Clark and Meg Gilman. We dropped Teresa off at Joseph Sobel's and headed to the house for a quick supper, then on to the Library tent for the NSN Storynight. They had a great lineup of Diane Ferlatte, Barbara Freeman, Bobby Norfolk, David Novak, Gayle Ross, Faye Wooden, and Rixon Lane. The pros were good, but I thought Rixon (youth from my native SC) and Faye (local) were the best.

I had traffic duty for four hours on Friday morning, so after getting Karen and Meg downtown, I picked up my ticket at the Christopher Taylor cabin and went to work. That afternoon I wandered from tent to tent. In the evening I heard John McCutcheon, Ben Haggarty, Beth Horner, Antonio Rocha, Kevin Kling, Won-ldy Paye, Erica Lann-Clark, Tim Tingle and Katheryn Windham. IMHO, all but one were good to great. It was my first time hearing Haggarty and he's now a favorite.

We had other guests who arrived Friday afternoon. Faye and her daughter Robbie were first-timer festival attendees. Faye won the tickets Jimmy Neal contributed for the Kiwanis Convention in August. They were great to have with us and enjoyed the festival.

The Midnight Cabaret featured Andy Offutt Irwin whom I love. I got my festival ticket by ushering at Andy's Teller in Residence program in July. I was a little disappointed because he really built up his new material in summer about Aunt Marguerite Van Camp and there wasn't much of it. But I still enjoyed him.

Sat. morning my traffic duty was early (7-11). It was fun, watching folks come in to town, saying good morning to them, answering their questions (where can I get coffee?, where can I park? and where's the College St. tent? in that order.) One guy said it was nice to have a sunflower greeting them and that made my day. Me...a sunflower. How 'bout that!

I grabbed some lunch and then it was on to Onawumi Jean Moss and then Kevin Kling. I was done for after that and headed home.

Sunday morning was the Featured Listeners breakfast. The room was full and the stories abound. David and Jeff (owners of the former Dogwood Lane) and others put on quite a spread. Mike and Susan welcomed us to the Parson's Table.The group lost two members this past year. Emotions were right at the surface. It was good to hear George stories.

The afternoon was more stories. I heard Bil Lepp who told one old and one new story. The old might have been new to the festival. Michael Reno Harrell was next. He's new the the festival crowd, but has been to Jonesborough many times. Tony and I had supper with him and Joan one evening when he was playing Jonesborough Days. His song Southern Accent kept me sane the 15 months we spent in Assachusetts. (My spelling of the state.) After his set, I headed home.

The fun continued that evening at Alta Cucina in Johnson City. It's a tradition to end the weekend at dinner somewhere with any Featured Listeners who are still in town, plus us Jonesborough folks. Meg came along with me. We filled the patio there. Tony and Karen were supposed to go to Joseph's after festival party, but I forgot and took the van. He doesn't have keys for my car. So after we ate, we came home and picked up Karen and went to Joseph's to end the evening with some good music.

Monday morning was a trip back to the airport for Karen and Meg to catch their flight. Then it was home to an empty, very quiet house. How many more days until the festival???

Lots of hats

Last Christmas our Kiwanis Club adopted the Head Start kids in Jonesborough. We had a great time buying gifts and they came to one of our meetings and sang carols to us.

I had knitted a few hats on my loom knitter and included some of them to be distributed. This year, I wanted to make sure I had enough made, so on August 28 I made an appointment in my Outlook that said "Make Hat." I have it recurring every three days until Dec 1. If I follow the schedule I will have 30 hats made.

Unfortunately (fortunately??, I don't know which), the schedule got messed up. Tony ended up in the hospital the day after Labor Day with 2 90+% blockages. He was in for 3 days and I ended up with about 5 nervously made hats. He's doing well now and started cardic rehab today. I'm now the "Food Nazi" watching everything he eats.

So today (9.22) I should have 9 completed hats. Instead, I finished number 14 yesterday and started #15. I figure I'll have about 40 done by 12.1.

I'm going to make an appeal on FreeCycle to take anyone's little bits and pieces of Homespun yarn. I like taking the different colors and making a hat with them. And hopefully we'll have a little cold weather and some kids will have warm ears. Either way, I'm having fun.

Here's what I have done so far.

All of them.

Close-up 1

Close-up 2

Close-up 3

Close-up 4

It's been a while...

since my last post. So what has happened? The Appalachian Fair came and went and our Kiwanis booth did real well. We sold hotdogs, hamburgers, funnel cakes, fries, and nachos and cheese. The booth was jumping every night. Here's some pictures.

We also had race guests. The two Bristol race weekends are a boon for hotels, B&Bs and private homes. We rented our guest room to a lovely young couple from NJ. He's a race fan. She just came to the US about a year ago from Bejing. It was her first race weekend and she seemed to like it. They might be regulars for the March and August races.

It's been so dry here that the leaves are turning early and falling. There are a lot of trees here and I think I'll be raking until December. LOL

We have the month of September coming up, bur I'm thinking about October already. I have a love/hate relationship with the month. I love that the National Storytelling Festival will be here before you know it. With it comes lots of my storytelling friends. We have three staying with us along with a mom and daughter who won the ISC gift basket, including festival tickets at our KY/TN Kiwanis convention earlier this month.

That's all why I love the month. I hate the month because all the wonderful fall colors will be overshadowed in the stores by the color pink. Now don't get me wrong. As a breast cancer survivor, I support Komen and ACS in the fight. But I have a very hard time with pink M&M's, pink KitchenAid Mixers, pink boxing gloves, SpongeBob SquarePants wearing Pink Pants and more. Each year more and more companies are jumping on the BC bandwagon and getting rich with no accountability.

I especially have a hard time with Pinkwashers. They support the fight against cancer and they get rich making products that are linked to the very disease.

Ok, I'll get off my soapbox...for now. I think I have a lot more to say on this subject and will be posting again before the pinking of Fall begins.

So what are you looking forward to this fall?